Arthub teamed up with NOWNESS to present a new group show called “naturalunnatural” as part of “experiments” opening on 8th November in Tank Art Project Space Shanghai.

“界” refers to boundaries as well as interfaces. They are the dual-universe that are opposites and close ties at the same time. It is an experimentation of moving images that transcends boundaries and goes beyond perception between the dynamic sound and image, between the undefined time and space. Unlimited to a single-sided engagement, exploring the intertwined relationship between different media and forms.

In this exhibition, Ryoji Ikeda, a leading figure in Japanese electronic music and visual arts, will be exhibiting at Tank No.1 of the TANK SHANGHAI. Tank No. 2 will be hosted by Laure Prouvost, an artist who will represent France at the Venice Biennale in 2019. A group exhibition of “ Naturalunnatural – How will be remembered in the future?”, curated by Davide Quadrio of Arthub, will also be presented. In addition, in the Tank No. 3, artist Lu Sisi will perform a special piece for the opening party. The event is not only the first public exhibition of TANK SHANGHAI, but is also a special project of the Shanghai Biennale 2019.

Naturalunnatural
How will we be remembered in the future?

text/Davide Quadrio

For this exhibition, I have been invited by NOWNESS to explore the fragile interstice between nature, sustainability, beauty, and artificiality. The title of the show natural-unnatural refers to a way that the scientific progress has brought nature into a far complex realm of ambiguity which the artworks selected here present responding to this call: What are we doing? How do we interact with Nature and how ecosystems are built and protected? How is natural beauty compromised or enhanced by the artificial?

The artists invited to this group show which illustrates the incredible new space at Tank Shanghai Project Space. This show is a journey that invites to reflect about beauty as an uncontroversial quality of the human and moves the visitor into a realm of sensuality and inevitability. This show is a journey to the discovery of the fragility of this world of natural beauty contaminated and changed into a world of plasticity and deformations, where the humanity in its comprehensive technical development, challenges Nature and transforms it into risky territory for the future of our children. This process and all its risks though are per se beautiful and in this sense dangerous, disturbing and potentially explosive.

The exhibition is not about accusing or criticizing, instead it is an ode to the attention of beauty from recycle the present and attempt to shape the future. These images, whether based on fact or fiction, tell us how people want to remember and be remembered. They expose the desire to overcome time, space and a physical presence. The feelings of the body, the joy of the senses bring us into a world of wonder in a ludic way.

The exhibition opens by Wu Chi-Tsung, born in 1981 in Taipei, who devotes significant attention to the methods used in producing and interpreting images. In Still Life 006 – Chrysanthemum (小品之六菊), 2017, Wu is inspired by a cherished memory of the act of painting, the overwhelming beauty is here somehow shadowed by a sense of loss and guilt, almost like creating images of such beauty, is a betrayal of art and its subversive nature. This overwhelming beauty, practically a frozen image, performs the duty to open the show and to create the tone of the entire show to come.

The second room occupied by Zeitguised. The collective founded in Berlin in 2001 by Jamie Raap and Henrik Mauler, Zeitguised is a studio of art and digital design, specializing in the production of visual projects (both commercial and independent) of an algorithmic nature. The piece “Flotsam & Jetsam: Monobloc,” 2016, treats the ubiquitous plastic chair as a contemporary design classic in a continuous tension with character. The tree trunk, the only natural element in a world of plastic, presented here as the plastic chairs suffocate a mere corpse. The enormous hovering cloud of iconic chairs that behave like flotsam and jetsam in breaking waves is an image of poetry in the form of an algorithmic Perpetuum mobile.

The second animation presented is called “Birds”, 2016, and it mirrors ironically the content of the previous artwork with abstractions of birds on a tree branch, which are changed into shapes and textures coming from their own experiential world being them of natural or artefacts nature: so the body of birds is changed into an housebird, egg, leaves, bones etc. The beauty and fluidity of the unnatural human construction (chair) and the birds (unnaturally processed by the artists’ manipulation) are here ironically depicted as parasites, beautiful ones, and in the case of chairs iconic ones, but still a dangerous relic of the risk of the insubstantiality of human manipulation.

Frederik Heyman, born 1984, whose work is a balancing act incorporating multiple media. In this work, by using cutting-edge 3D scanning technology, Heyman virtually ’embalmed’ icons Isabelle Huppert, Kim Peers and Michèle Lamy in the latest episode of NOWNESS’s hit series Define Beauty. This work appears on the tv screen opposite to Zeitguised and brings the question as well as the subtitle of the exhibition: how do you want to be remembered forever?

In response to the question, Heyman created a digital memorial: a way to project ourselves into the distant future and be remembered by generations to come––exactly as we want to be. Using photogrammetry (3D scans), Heyman created frozen moments in time that emerges digital ‘wakes’ which will continue beyond our mortal existence surrounded by fantastic nature, flowers, trees, water, etc. life made of a plastic view is so unnatural and yet so painfully attractive.

The third room occupies by Éponine Momenceau, born in 1985, who patiently draws the outlines of a poetic and contemplative work, fruitfully heading towards a contemporary art that mixes dark rooms and exhibition spaces. The work Now is an Infinite Time, 2016 , is cyclic and hypnotic movement produced by the appearance of insects flying in a ray of light in the Amazon rainforest.

The movement thereby recalls the visions that one can have under the effect of ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic plant with healing properties according to the beliefs of Amerindian tribes of Amazonia. Bach’s Adagio of the Concerto accompanies this movement for two harpsichords and orchestra in C minor BWV 1060, of which study related to hypnotic mechanism has found to be music with healing and structuring properties based on impulse and tonal harmony. The artificial effect almost abstract of this artwork pairs the works by Zeitguised and Wu Chi-Tsung, bringing the subject of this show into a sphere of metaphysic innuendos, where life, death, love, trees, animals, viewer are only a small dot in the infinite time of the cosmos existence.

Tomás Saraceno, born in Argentina in 1973, lives and works in Berlin, concludes the exhibition bringing the theme of the show onto a cosmic level. The foreign world presented in the video The Politics of Solar Rhythm-Cosmic Levitation, 2018, explores and mimic cosmic celestial movements, almost showing the formation of a galactic planet, however the simulation brings this macro view into a micro world of dust and levitation of space dust suspended by sound waves. Thus the last room of this journey brings the viewer into a world of silence and of tiny/mega proportions, unnatural yet so natural leaves the viewer at the shore of the universal creation: disturbing and full of fear, humanity is brought back to the mysterious place of the beginning of everything, to a place where humanity is silenced by the extraordinary act of creation.

ABOUT NOWNESS

NOWNESS is a leading global creative video platform, presenting the best new wave short films in design, fashion, music, food, architecture, travel, etc. A go-to source of inspiration and influence, and a movement for creative excellence in storytelling. We celebrate the extraordinary of every day.

NOWNESS is the three-time Webby award-winning culture channel launched in 2010 in a collaboration between Dazed Media and LVMH. In 2017, leading independent Chinese media company Modern Media invested in NOWNESS to launch NOWNESS China and partnered with Dazed Media to create the global progressive publishing company Modern Dazed. The current team includes Creative Director and Dazed founder Jefferson Hack, Editorial Director Bunny Kinney and China Creative Director Shaway Yeh.

ABOUT TANK SHANGHAI

TANK SHANGHAI, founded by renowned contemporary art collector Qiao Zhibing, is a multifunctional cultural hub that combines exhibition venue with parkland, plaza, bookstore, education center and restaurant. The construction acreage is 10,00 sqm, and the whole project space spans over 60,000sqm.TANK SHANGHAI will be opened to the public in 2019. TANK SHANGHAI aims to foster connections among the public, contemporary art, urban life and nature. It is an upcoming center for public cultural activities and art at the West Bund.